diff --git a/brainstorm/SKILL.md b/brainstorm/SKILL.md
index cba045f..b0ecec0 100644
--- a/brainstorm/SKILL.md
+++ b/brainstorm/SKILL.md
@@ -69,6 +69,12 @@ Before asking any clarifying questions:
 - If the project has a design ledger configured under
   `paths.design_ledger`, walk to the relevant contracts for
   the invariants the new cycle might touch.
+- When reading any file under `paths.design_models` (or the
+  ledger's "model" rows), note its `status` /
+  `validated-against` frontmatter if present: `status:
+  aspirational` means its code is a target, not verified fact.
+  Track which content you may lift from such a source — it is
+  flagged for lift-time validation (Step 4).
 - `git log --oneline -20` for the chronological scan.
 - Identify scope: is this one cycle, or does it need to be
   decomposed into sub-cycles first? If multi-subsystem,
@@ -146,6 +152,16 @@ code to show" is the rationalisation to refuse: an infra
 cycle that cannot be tied to concrete code is speculative
 infra.
 
+**Code lifted from an aspirational source is a hypothesis, not
+evidence.** If the concrete code here is lifted from a
+`design_models` file (or any source marked `status: aspirational`,
+per Step 1), it carries no validation by default — the marker
+exists precisely because no one has run it through the live tool.
+Its `design/` location is not ratification. Treat it as the spec's
+most suspect bytes: it must clear the Step-7 parse-every-block
+gate before PASS. The marker tells you *which* blocks to distrust
+first.
+
 ### Step 5 — Present design in sections
 
 Scale each section to its complexity (a few sentences if
@@ -375,6 +391,7 @@ Hand off carries:
 | "Just polishing a wording after PASS, no need to re-dispatch" | The grounding-check report attests to specific bytes. A polish edit changes the bytes; the previous attestation no longer covers them. Re-dispatch is cheap; the alternative is a commit with an attestation that doesn't match the file. |
 | "The shape is clear from the prose, I don't need to paste the code" | If it's clear, pasting it is free; if pasting it is hard, it wasn't clear. The feature-acceptance criterion is unjudgeable without the worked code; "a user reaches for it" with no shown code is the exact hand-wave the criterion exists to kill. |
 | "The block obviously parses — I wrote it carefully" | Careful authoring is not a parse. A spec's code blocks are hypotheses until the live tool accepts them; treating them as truth is the compound-hallucination failure the parse-every-block gate exists to kill. If a parser is configured for the block's fence label, run it and paste the trace. |
+| "It's in a model doc / the design ledger, so it's canonical" | A `models` / RFC / proposal doc holds aspirational code — a target, not verified fact; its `design/` location is not ratification. Code lifted from a `status: aspirational` source must clear the Step-7 parse gate like any other block, and is in fact the most suspect bytes in the spec. |
 
 ## Red Flags — STOP
 
@@ -389,6 +406,9 @@ Hand off carries:
 - A spec carrying a code block whose fence label has a
   configured `spec_validation` parser, committed without a
   parse-trace in the brainstorm chat
+- Lifting code verbatim from a `status: aspirational` source (a
+  `models` / RFC / proposal file) into the spec without flagging
+  it for the Step-7 parse gate
 - Editing the spec file after a Step 7.5 PASS without
   re-dispatching
 - Jumping straight from spec to `implement` (must go via
diff --git a/docs/profile-schema.md b/docs/profile-schema.md
index 1797fbe..974d4a9 100644
--- a/docs/profile-schema.md
+++ b/docs/profile-schema.md
@@ -23,6 +23,37 @@ Omitted optional keys signal that the feature is unused in this
 project; skills that depend on them either short-circuit or
 skip the corresponding step.
 
+### Aspirational-source marker (recommendation)
+
+Files under `design_models` (or an equivalent `RFCs` /
+`proposals` directory) commonly carry aspirational code —
+constructs written before the surface that would parse them
+exists. To let a later brainstorm tell aspirational content from
+validated contract, projects are encouraged (not required) to
+give each such file a frontmatter marker:
+
+```yaml
+---
+status: aspirational
+validated-against: <commit-sha | "no validation">
+---
+```
+
+`status: aspirational` says "the code here is a target, not a
+verified fact"; `validated-against` records the last commit at
+which someone actually ran the code through the live tool (or
+`"no validation"`). A design ledger (`design_ledger`) is likewise
+encouraged to distinguish "model" rows from "contract" rows so a
+reading agent can mechanically tell which carry verified
+behaviour.
+
+When a file lacks the marker the signal is simply absent — the
+brainstorm degrades to treating its content as unmarked, never
+hard-failing. The marker is consumed by the brainstorm skill (see
+its Step 1 and Step 4): content lifted from an aspirational source
+is flagged and must clear the Step-7 parse-every-block gate before
+it ships in a spec.
+
 ## `naming`
 
 | Key                | Type   | Default                          | Description |